


Deneb

by aderyn



Series: The Bird Diviner [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Birds, Magical Realism, Mates, Migrations, Return, Stars, Swans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 04:45:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/922144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s never been. A swan made of stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deneb

_"Now one after another I let the black scales fall_

_From the beautiful black spine_

_Of this lonesome dragon that is born on the earth at last.”—James Wright, “Three Sentences for a Dead Swan”_

He’s never been. A swan made of stars. There’s star where his heart was, lungs belling double time, but he’s never been in the sky.

(Oh he’s been somewhere, long gone.)

Grain at their table. A croak. A breath. Nares, cervical vertebrae, the last vestige of neck.

“Twenty-five,” John says, running a hand over the seven Sherlock has now. “You used to have more.”

He doesn’t recall. Time whistles past. Wings folded. Home again.

Hand to hand they are, webbed, bruised, purpled with joy.

Mammalian squeeze, four-chambered thump.

It might be obvious, how human.

*****

John looks out the window to bright blinks, meteors streaking the sky, becoming down.

Watches Sherlock sleep in a shine of vanes, spacedust in the hollow bones.

Remembers the Milky Way, a live whiteness, how he reached up, plucked a path free.

*****

You told me once, John thinks, about _Anatidae._

Their northern passage,

over the flightways cygnet to cob.

Too lonely for space, they lift and descend.

They stay.

*

He dreams of a song, wakes to another.

“John,” Sherlock says, “I won’t die again, but if I should…”

_Set me in the sky, observe._

_Look north in high summer._

_Set your eye to Deneb, the tail,_

_Sadr, the breast,_

_Albireo, the beak,_

_the amber-green of Beta Cygni, doubled_

_and much-loved._

_Calculate, triangulate_

_the long fall into the body._

**Author's Note:**

> "Deneb is not the biggest star in the Milky Way... but [it] may well be the most energetic (based on the amount of electromagnetic radiation it produces) of the A-type stars."--earthsky.org
> 
> [Cygnus mythology](http://www.comfychair.org/~cmbell/myth/cygnus.html)
> 
> [Deneb and the constellation Cygnus the Swan](http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/deneb-among-the-farthest-stars-to-be-seen)
> 
> [ Swan feather](http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v243/chocolover/me1/SwanFeather_5.jpg&imgrefurl=http://orlandolove.net/orlandolove/showthread.php?p%3D698991&h=2258&w=2000&sz=510&tbnid=G_0QE-p58IMQFM:&tbnh=117&tbnw=104&zoom=1&usg=__Pzx45b-Civqg8Y0EtZx4M1pgN9A=&docid=ZfzNjtoorond0M&sa=X&ei=cAsIUoLECaSGyQHC2oGgBA&ved=0CD8Q9QEwAg&dur=1938)


End file.
